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Story {border:solid 0!important;} .image {border:solid 0!important;} The End of an Era In the year 2088, pollution brought the earth to the brink of destruction. Ferocious natural disasters chipped away at the human population and devastated civic infrastructure. As the polar icecaps melted, islands vanished underwater – then entire coastlines. Faced with the possibility of extinction, the United Nations created a binding global resolution called the Earth Rehabilitation Act, and a supranational committee to implement it called the Ethics Oversight Syndicate, or ETHOS. The committee’s first action was to establish a hefty universal tax to pay for itself. Severe regulations on manufacturing and resource extraction aided the environment, but crippled industry. ETHOS advisors decided to hedge their bets by diverting huge sums to a private technology contractor named Asgard. It was appointed the task of creating a failsafe – an exodus, should the worst come to pass. The desperate search for habitable extraterrestrial planets began. Fallout Environmental recovery made slow progress over the following decades, but the rehabilitation act presented a different sort of peril: businesses faltered under the weight of new restrictions; economies dipped to dire recession levels; cities struggled to function due to bans on petroleum and other fossil fuels. Separatist factions emerged to challenge ETHOS. Violence erupted, as corporate-funded guerilla movements committed acts of terrorism to disrupt key ERA initiatives. Amidst the geopolitical turmoil, ETHOS advisors quietly turned to Asgard, whose pioneer shuttle, the Genesis Eden, had just made an extraordinary discovery in the outer ring of the galaxy. False Prophets The Genesis Eden crew had discovered a mineral with a previously unseen molecular structure on Marek-7, a planet with a similar climate and composition to that of Earth. The mineral was named Lapis Vitae, or ‘Lifestone’, after experiments revealed that when penetrated by x-rays the ore emitted sustainable, pollutant-free heat. The discovery came at a critical juncture of the escalating global conflict. ETHOS went public with Asgard’s findings: a coin-sized piece of Lifestone could fuel a car for its entire life cycle; a commercial airliner could cross the swollen Pacific with a chunk the size of a baseball. Asgard’s COO famously stated to the media: "Ragnarok has been averted, thanks to Asgard". The patenting of Lapis Vitae led to a godlike financial windfall for Asgard, which, thanks to ETHOS, was already decades ahead of its competitors in weapons and aerospace technology. They became the most powerful entity in the world – while the other floundering corporations watched with growing anger. Avarice Meanwhile, the Genesis Eden’s probe of Marek-7 yielded more marvels. The crew made first contact with an alien life form, and many others soon after. As the crew expanded their research zone, they discovered that Marek-7 was teeming with life. They’d brought about a galactic renaissance, but their excitement was short-lived. Some years after first contact, Asgard received a distress signal from the Genesis Eden. Something had ambushed its research crew, leaving no survivors. The scientists, security retinue, and mining bots had all been annihilated by a hostile indigenous species. Asgard’s top executives suppressed an initial surge of panic and made a unanimous decision: Lapis Vitae was worth fighting for. Elsewhere, a secret merger was made between the ten largest corporations in the world – an attempt to pool resources and make a play for their share of the Lifestone market. Using newly-available Asgard-tech, they would send battalions of engineers and mercenaries to seize and develop territory on Marek-7. Thus the Magellan Project was born. A massive fleet of spacecrafts bound for Marek-7 was assembled: the Magellan Armada. Armada Word spread, as word does: Magellan needed soldiers. It promised wealth, adventure, and a chance to change the course of humankind. Mercenaries, fortune-hunters, and ex-soldiers flocked to compete for a spot on the Armada. The selection process was rigorous. Those who passed a seven-stage physical exam underwent thorough training with a proprietary virtual simulator. The most elite were assimilated into the fleet and whisked to Marek-7, where they anticipated an easy rout of Asgard’s meager collection of researchers and security agents. But they hadn’t been privy to the Genesis Eden’s classified transmissions. They knew nothing of the vicious alien species that was disinclined to let emissaries from Earth strip the land of its natural resources. Neither did they know that following the Genesis Eden massacre, Asgard had discretely installed an elite army of its own. The Magellan Armada was walking into a territory war unlike any that had ever been imagined – with hyper-evolved hostile aliens on one side, and a rival corporate army on the other. The battle for control of the only resource that could save the Earth was about to begin.